Cape Town – Medical aid fraud, theft and shoddy treatment of patients seem to be on the increase among doctors, if the Health Professions Council of South Africa’s misconduct figures are anything to go by.

The council said that of about 3 000 complaints received in a 12-months period, almost 120 had been referred to the police for investigation as the practitioners involved were not registered with the body.

Of about 1,830 cases it considered, it finalized 734 during the financial year.

It found about 200 doctors guilty of misconduct.

More than 400 complaints were referred to the Office of the Ombudsman for mediation, while 200 cases were referred to the council’s Professional Conduct Committee.

> 49 doctors were found guilty of theft and fraud

> 41 doctors were found guilty of providing insufficient treatment and of mismanagement of patients

> At least 30 doctors were penalized for overcharging their patients or charging for services not rendered

> 15 were found to have been negligent

> A further 15 were found to have brought their professions into disrepute

Council spokeswoman Lize Nel expressed concern about the increase in the number of fraudulent claims for money – many of them from medical aids – that were made by doctors. “Not only is committing fraud strictly against the council’s good practice guidelines, but it is a criminal offense.”

She said South African doctors continued to rank among the best in the world, “which is why they are so esteemed and in such demand around the globe”.

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Our Observation:

Yes, South Africa does indeed generate some of the finest physicians in the world:

According to a press release by the District Attorney’s office in Marion County, Doctor Segun Rasaki, age 50, is being charged yet again for serious criminal misbehavior – this time, two dozen felonies in the realm of narcotic distribution.

Rasaki was arrested after an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration officer pretending to be a patient, went to his clinic in Indianapolis, and was prescribed narcotics for no medical reason whatsoever. The agent’s visit was one aspect of an investigation into the errant MD’s behavior that started in 2009. At that time, law enforcement was tipped off by local pharmacists who noticed a disturbing pattern in Rasaki’s prescription routine.

Rasaki, who apparently has been writing bogus prescriptions with no active medical license, is also believed to have filed duplicate billings, scammed proper medical billing coding, and billing for patient examinations that never occurred.

Rasaki was convicted of Sexual Assault last summer after a number of adult female patients reported his inappropriate touching. Some of the women testified that the doctor told them they needed vaginal exams every 30 days.

An Omaha superior court judge ruled last week there is more than enough evidence for a physician to be bound over for trial, for four murders that police say were acts of revenge over his firing from a residency program in 2001.

Dr Roger & Mary Brumback dead

Doctor Anthony J. Garcia, age 40, is charged with four counts of first-degree Murder in connection with the deaths of Doctor Roger Brumback and his wife, Mary.

Thomas Hunter

According to investigators, he also killed an 11-year-old boy, Thomas Hunter and a woman named Shirlee Sherman, in 2008.

Shirlee Sherman

Douglas County District Court Judge Darryl Lowe ordered Garcia to remain in custody. He was arrested July 15 by the Illinois State Police and FBI agents in southern Illinois.

Investigators believe the four murders were acts of revenge against Brumback and another Creighton University doctor, Doctor William Hunter, who terminated his residency training in 2001 for disruptive physician behavior toward staff members. The boy who was shot and killed was the son of Doctor Hunter, and Ms. Sherman was the Hunters’ housekeeper.

A physician who was convicted of killing his wife 3 years ago in the United States has now been permitted to open a new medical practice in Sydney Nova Scotia. Trust us: you’ve just got to love the perks we give healthcare criminals.

“The doctor was infatuated with another woman, who worked in the clinic.” (Prosecutor Richie Bottoms)

Doctor Steven Hall, a general practitioner, ran over his wife Isabel with a pontoon boat on Herrington Lake in Kentucky in May 2009, as the couple was celebrating their 21st wedding anniversary. She died almost immediately.

Isabel Hall “suffered terrible injuries to her head and face.” (Kentucky State Police)

A Kentucky Superior Court jury found Hall, age 49, guilty of second degree Manslaughter, and he was sentenced to 5 years in prison. But he served a scant 30 months before being released because, well, he wears a lab coat at work, don’t you know. Doctors are special.

When questioned by police on the day in question, Hall admitted that he’d made a crude remark about another woman’s breasts that day at the lake, sending his wife, age 50, into a rage. She attacked him, he said, and he pushed her overboard.

She was in the water in front of the boat screaming, “Help. He’s trying to kill me!” when he ran over her. Hall admitted to police that he revved the boat engine to scare her. He maintained that he accidentally ran over her instead.

But according to court documents, 5 witnesses told police that Hall put the boat into “full throttle” toward his wife. She suffered deep wounds to her head when the propeller hit her, as well as cuts to her left hand and left forearm.

The only aspect of this bizarre soap opera more insane than a doctor chopping up his wife with a boat propeller, is the fact that society allows governments to enable these undisciplined dimwits, by relicensing them again and again.

Trust us: the next lady in his life will think he’s quite the lab-coat catch.

In Fall River Massachusetts Bristol County Courthouse last week a doctor changed his “Not Guilty” plea to “Guilty,” to a long list of health care fraud charges.

Doctor Michael A. Taylor, age 62, confessed to 16 counts of illegally prescribing narcotics; 12 counts of stealing from the state Medicaid insurance system, and three other counts of theft, according to a state attorney general press release.

Judge Frances McIntyre gave Taylor a 2½-year suspended sentence and ordered probation for five years.

According to the state attorney general, “Illegally prescribing drugs with a high potential for abuse is a serious offense that puts patients at risk and steals critical funding from MassHealth.”

Taylor prescribed oxycodone, along with Percocet and other oxycodone-based drugs, for no legitimate medical purpose, prosecutors said. By doing this, he caused pharmacies to falsely bill MassHealth for these narcotics by representing that they were appropriate and medically necessary.

He fraudulently billed more than $9,800 to MassHealth for office visits when patients picked up drug prescriptions without seeing him and for office visits when he was not even in the state.

Here’s more:

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Our Observations:

The Massachusetts State Attorney General made this inane pronouncement:

“This sentencing demonstrates that licensed doctors who engage in these fraudulent practices will be held criminally responsible for their actions.”

Not even close. What this ridiculously spineless sentence pronounces to every unethical nut out there, is that the worst they can expect from a life of fraud is a slap on the thieving behind.

Which may contribute to the 2,500 criminal MDs the year 2013 will regurgitate.

In the state capital of Montgomery a circuit court jury needed less than two hours today to find a doctor guilty of Murder in a case that happened two years ago.

Dr David Nash, Serena English, Jeremy Riley Murder-for-hire plot

Doctor Zev-David Nash, age 54, was convicted of Capital Murder for-hire in a trial presided over by Judge Charles Price. During the trial the prosecution was able to prove that Nash, along with his girlfriend Serena English, had paid drug pusher Jeremy Riley and a cousin the sum of $9,000 to kill a man named Ralph McNeil.

Investigators learned that Serena English was in middle of contentious child custody dispute with McNeil. His body was discovered outside of his trailer in January, 2011. He had been shot and stabbed multiple times.

This isn’t the first time Nash has gotten into deep trouble. In 2005 the Alabama State Medical Board revoked his medical license after learning that he had been administering fake flu shots to his patients. The Board found the doctor was substituting a worthless saline solution for flu vaccine. His antics were exposed during a sting operation.

English and Jeremy Riley had already pleaded guilty, and English testified as a key witness in the trial of the madcap MD.

How many ‘bad doctors’ did you hear about during the Healthcare Reform debates? Zero

Our Observations:

Nincompoop Nash is an excellent example of what we in healthcare call Lab Coat Lunatics.

He graduated from Albert Einstein College Of Medicine of Yeshiva University in 1987 with a specialty in internal medicine. At some point in his young career he realized – as so many thousands of other new physicians do – that the quickest path to wealth is plundering the system and thumbing your nose at ethical patient care. In a saner healthcare system, this man would have been locked up 8 years ago.